Pouring public investment into poorer towns and cities might be politically beneficial, but the economic returns of indiscriminate largesse would be limited. A better approach would concentrate investment in areas with the potential to become high-productivity hubs, such as large peripheral cities.
SEOUL—Discussion of economic inequality usually focuses on disparities across countries or the divide between rich and poor households within them. But greater attention is now being devoted to domestic regional differences, whether between the capital city and the rest of the country (as in South Korea and the United Kingdom), between northern and southern regions (as in Italy), or between coastal cities and inland areas (as in China and the United States).